Kuusakoski to set up Finnish wire chopping facility

Kuusakoski Oy says it is setting up a $7 million wire and cable recycling plant for “aluminum- and copper-containing materials” that will be completed next year in Heinola, Finland. The company calls the facility part of its multiyear investment program designed to increase capacity, enhance material yield and deliver cleaner recycled raw material products.

”Our new copper center is unique in Finland,” President and CEO Mikko Kuusilehto says. “With this investment, we are able to serve our customers more locally, which is not only more sustainable for the [the] environment but also financially profitable—both for us and for our customers.”

Kuusakoski, based in Finland, says equipment at the new plant will be able to process copper- and aluminum-containing cables and separate the metals before the copper fraction is refined by Kuusakoski in Heinola and the aluminum fraction proceeds to a separate smelter.

The facility is intended to process cables, radiators, transformers and other copper-containing scrap generated within Finland. Until now, the company has only had a similar operation in neighboring Sweden.

The facility consists of a precrushing line and a separation line. In the precrushing line, the material is crushed and separated using magnetic separators and a windscreen. With a windscreen, paper can be removed from transformer copper. Some of the materials are already end products after having completed the precrushing process, Kuusakoski says.

In the separation line, the remaining material is granulated into small particles to enable separation. For example, based on the weight of the particles, aluminum, copper and plastic can be separated and collected from cables and radiators.

“By producing cleaner copper and aluminum fractions, we provide our customers with a higher utilization rate of recycled material,” Kuusilehto says. “The whole of society benefits from this. Emission savings achieved by Kuusakoski's products, our carbon handprint, is over 10 times more than the emissions caused, our carbon footprint.”

With a production capacity of about 2.5 tons per hour, about 40 tons of copper can be produced per week at the plant, the company estimates. That corresponds to the amount of copper used in approximately 500 electric vehicles.

The chopping facility under construction will be integrated into Kuusakoski's copper refining plant in Heinola. Kuusakoski says the chopping line will help improve the competitiveness of its Heinola plant, which it calls the largest integrated recycling plant in Northern Europe.